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The Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) Interface
Figure 1.63 shows an overview of the Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) interface. It shows the basic preview pane that takes up the bulk of the interface. The tonal, color, and effects controls are on the right, and the workflow and resizing options are on the lower left. Note the histogram in the top-right corner, which displays the tonal information representing the red, green, and blue channels independently. Any information from the center to the left of the graph represents the middle to lower tonalities until it reaches black. Inversely, the center of the graph all the way to the right represents the middle to brighter tonalities toward white.

A higher vertical mound indicates a greater amount of those particular tones and colors in your image. It is important to note that the new ACR will not just open raw formats. It will now open TIFF and JPEG as well, which you’ll see later.

You may use your own raw files, or you can use the one provided in Tutorials/ch 1 original images/sanddune.crw. Use Bridge to navigate to the file, right-click, and select Open in Camera Raw.

[Figure 1.63] Raw interface.

You are now going to gain some familiarity with the power of the new ACR 5.3 (Adobe Camera Raw) interface. You’ll immediately see some improvements to the ACR interface. These changes will not only allow you to gain a better handle on correcting contrast, white balance, or sharpening, but they will also give you the ability to clean up any imperfections having to do with the dust on your sensor, correct red eye, and use new improved tonal and color correction tools. Bridge gives you the most effective way to open your images in ACR. Just rightclick the thumbnail and select Open in Camera Raw from the list. You can open TIFF and JPEG images in ACR this way as well.

If you want your raw, JPEG, and TIFF files to open automatically in ACR, then you can specify this in two places. One is in the Photoshop preferences (Ctrl+K/CMD+K). Under the File Handling menu, you will see a section titled File Compatibility. Under that heading, click the button called Camera Raw Preferences. On the bottom, you will see a section titled JPEG and TIFF Handling. Make sure that you select Automatically Open All Supported JPEGs for the JPEG option and Automatically Open All Supported TIFFs for the TIFF option.

[Figure 1.64] Raw interface color space, bit depth, and sizing and resolution options.

[Figure 1.65] The White Balance options.

The second area where you can locate the ACR options is in Bridge. Just go to Edit > Camera Raw Preferences.

Let’s explore the new interface.

1. Click each of the drop-down menus in the Workflow Options area to preview your options for color space(A), bit depth(B), and sizing and resolution(C), as shown in Figure 1.64.

2. White balance is simply the process of making your whites in your photograph as close to a neutral white as possible. In other words, proper white balance is the process of removing any color cast in the highlight areas. ACR gives you presets that relate directly to the white balance settings in your digital camera (see Figure 1.65). So you can choose one that will give you the best result.